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Rereading Grotius in the Year 1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2017

Durward V. Sandifer
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Extract

“We await a jurist with the mastery of the legal materials, the philosophical vision, and the juristic faith which enabled Grotius to set up a law of nations almost at one stroke,” declared Dean Pound in concluding his address before the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law on “The Idea of Law in International Relations.” That is a statement which challenges the attention and arouses the curiosity of a present-day international lawyer. Although accustomed as such a lawyer is to the notion of Grotius as the founder and father of the law of nations, it is a little startling to be told that the answer to the current dilemma of international law is contingent upon the advent of a jurist with his accomplishments. What is there in his De Jure Belli ac Pads to warrant such confidence? What would he have to offer as a guide to a lawyer seeking to extend and to reenforce the domain of law in international relations?

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , July 1940 , pp. 459 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © by the American Society of International Law 1940

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References

1 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1939, pp. 10, 23.

2 The translation of Grotius’ De Jure Belli ac Pacis Lihri Tres published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1925 in its series, “The Classics of International Law, ” edited by James Brown Scott, has been used for the purpose of this study. This translation is of the edition published in Amsterdam in 1646, which embodied the last revision made by Grotius. All page references given without other indication are to the Carnegie translation.

3 The validity of the latter part of this statement Grotius attests with the following note: “So [St. John] Chrysostom [Greek Father of the Church, 344–407 A. D.] in his sermon On Alms [beginning]: ‘Man is the being dearest to God.’”

4 The name of one woman appears among the authorities: Anna Comnena (1083–1148), daughter of Alexis I, Emperor of Constantinople.

5 It is interesting to note Grotius’ own observations concerning his manner of writing: “As regards manner of expression, I wished not to disgust the reader, whose interests I continually had in mind, by adding prolixity of words to the multiplicity of matters needing to be treated. I have therefore followed, so far as I could, a mode of speaking at the same time concise and suitable for exposition, in order that those who deal with public affairs may have, as it were, in a single view both the kinds of controversies which are wont to arise and the principles by reference to which they may be decided. These points being known, it will be easy to adapt one’s argument to the matter at issue, and expand it at one’s pleasure.” (p. 30.)

6 In concluding his Introduction Dr. Scott observes:

“Perhaps the best comment upon his life and influence is that, although he gave war first place in the rights and duties of nations, any man writing today would give peace that predominance; in other words, the whole standard of thought has changed, peace being in conception, and bound to be in fact, the normal state of things in any system of law; whereas war is at best an abnormal condition and as such opposed to a settlement of disputes according to any system of law which is itself derived from justice.” (p. xliii.)

7 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1939, p. 23.